


when you stand on a rock you are tall

by rarmaster



Category: Kingdom Hearts (Video Games)
Genre: Gen, namine derails org13's plans by calling in a favor from her big buff friend, or: the friendship we all deserved tbh
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-29
Updated: 2020-06-29
Packaged: 2021-03-03 23:42:15
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,418
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24974029
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rarmaster/pseuds/rarmaster
Summary: Namine and Terra become friends. Chain of Memories goes a little differently. Or rather, it doesn't really start at all.
Relationships: Naminé & Terra (Kingdom Hearts)
Comments: 7
Kudos: 44





	when you stand on a rock you are tall

**Author's Note:**

> found not one but TWO mostly finished fics about Namine in my wips folder that could be salvaged so here's: this one. concieved at about roughly the time the KH Orchestra did the Namine and Terra conversation. was theoretically going to be a longer AU but that is never going to happen now, HOWEVER, this scene was basically done and there was literally no reason for me not to share it, especially considering it is Rad As Hell
> 
> enjoy

If Namine thought about it, she supposed, Terra was the first friend she ever made. She met him not long after she was… “born”. Went looking for him actually. When she was born, she was born with a sadness bursting in her chest, born with the weight of a million sorrows on her shoulders. They weren’t her sorrows. They were the sorrows of people she was connected to—or rather, people Sora was connected to.

She couldn’t do anything for Ven, at this moment. She’d tried waking him up (she was born in the same room he was sleeping) but couldn’t figure out how. (Leaving the room had been a mistake, of a sort, because she’d never been able to find him again.)

She tried to help Aqua. It was surprisingly easy to reach her, actually. Easy to send a bit of her consciousness to where Aqua was. It… wasn’t easy to help Aqua, though. She tried but, well, perhaps the less that was said about the conversation they had, the better. (It wasn’t Aqua’s fault, really. She’d just been wandering in darkness too long. Much, much too long.)

All that was left to do, then, was to go to Terra.

It wasn’t that she could help him. She had as much of an idea how to help him as how to help Ven—so, no idea, at all. But there was something he could help her with.

“It’s your friend,” she told him, after she introduced herself. “She’s lost in the dark, and she needs a light to guide her, but—”

“You mean Aqua?” Terra cut her off. His helmet didn’t show any emotion, and really his voice was nothing but a creaking of metal, but she could understand him fine, understand the confusion in his voice. “I- I don’t know if I can help, like this…”

“It’s okay,” Namine said. “I have an idea. Just trust me, okay?”

Terra hesitated, but then his shoulders relaxed. “Okay. What do I need to do.”

She talked to him, from time to time, after that. There was really nothing else to do other than explore the Castle, and there was nothing to find in it, all things considered. To stave off boredom, and loneliness, she stopped every now and then and reached out to Terra again. It was exhausting, to keep the connection open for long, though, so they could really only talk for twenty minutes or so at a time.

But they talked. And they became friends. It was nice to have a friend to talk to, Namine thought. And she suspected, maybe, she had helped Terra in a way. She’d given him something to do that wasn’t sit and think about how much he hated Xehanort…

When the Organization came, she didn’t have much time to talk to him anymore. She wanted to but… Well, it was hard to get a moment alone.

The Organization seemed to think just because they had control over the Castle—and, who gave them control, anyway!?—they also had control over her. Namine didn’t think so. She wanted no part in their plans, she didn’t want to rewrite anyone’s memory, and she didn’t see why she had to listen to them.

She was terrified of Larxene, though. She’d met her only once, and in that meeting Larxene had tried to make it _very_ clear who was “supposed” to be in charge. Namine shuddered at the memory, at the feel of phantom electricity on her skin.

She was hiding, now. It was a very large castle, and she’d explored it plenty, so she knew of all the good places to hide. Plus, the castle seemed to be _very_ good at keeping you hidden when you wanted to be that way.

The room Namine sat in looked like it was, maybe, a bedroom? It was kind of… sideways, though. The bed (though it appeared to be made out of pure marble, like everything else in this room, and in the castle) was stuck to the wall, along with a bookshelf, and a dresser, and a desk and various pens and books and knick-knacks—all turned marble. Namine was curled up in the corner, where she wouldn’t be immediately in-sight from the doorway.

Namine knew that, alone, there was nothing she could do against the Organization.

But… she knew where to get help.

She closed her eyes, and pictured in her head a familiar scene. A dusty desert. A suit of bronze metal, crouched in the dirt, head bowed over his Keyblade. It took a little wishing, and a little reaching for the pieces of his heart she could touch (they weren’t all in this spot, in this place…) but then—

Well, she wasn’t _there._ But a little bit of her was, a projection of her, standing in the dust before her friend. She’d been talking to him off and on for the past couple weeks (had it been weeks?) after she’d enlisted his help to help another friend of his.

The suit of armor straightened a little, like life returning to it, and its head raised.

“Namine…!” her friend said. His voice was like the creaking and groaning of metal, but she could understand him just fine.

“Terra,” she said, and she smiled. He always seemed so surprised when she showed up like this, and it was funny—but, no, there wasn’t time. Her smile faltered, and she took a deep breath. “Listen, I need your help…”

Terra stood up rapidly. “Is it Aqua again?” he asked, anxious.

Namine shook her head, a pang of guilt in her chest. She felt a little selfish asking his help just for her own sake. “No, it’s. Me. I need your help, personally this time,” she said. “There’s this- these people. They call themselves Organization XIII. I don’t know a lot about them, but they showed up in the Castle and they want me to work for them, and—” She wanted to mention Larxene, the aches she still felt in her bones, but all the words she could formulate to explain it turned to ash in her mouth. She swallowed. “I don’t know what to do, but I’m… Scared.”

Terra considered her a long moment. He slowly went very rigid, setting his shoulders, helmet facing straight ahead instead of tilting down to look at her. He pulled his Keyblade out of the ground.

“What do you want me to do?” he asked.

Namine took a deep breath. Then she reached out and formed a dark corridor.

“Can you… come help?”

Terra turned towards the dark corridor, shoulders tensing.

“Please, Terra.”

Namine wasn’t entirely sure what she wanted from him, she just knew she’d feel a little bit safer if he was with her. What could Larxene do, if she had a giant suit of armor to protect her?

The door of the room she was hiding in slammed open, and Namine jumped, eyes still squeezed shut and her attention still mostly on Terra, the desert painted against the back of her eyelids, but she could _hear_ Larxene’s footsteps just fine. And…

“Ah, there you are!” Larxene called with fake-cheer, and Namine could hear that just fine, too. She tensed, a thrill of fear in her heart. How did Larxene find her so quick? But if Larxene was here, then she couldn’t keep talking to Terra, because she needed _all_ of her concentration to do this, to send her consciousness to where Terra was, so:

“I have to go,” she pleaded, quickly. “Terra—”

But before she could finish or even open her eyes, Larxene was yanking her by the arm and to her feet. The connection she’d forged to Terra’s location snapped so suddenly that Namine was surprised to see that the dark corridor there was still open.

Larxene considered that particular dark corridor with a sneer. “If this was some kind of escape attempt, it was a pretty lousy one,” she informed Namine, crisply.

“It wasn’t,” Namine argued, confident if a little scared.

“Well, whatever.” Larxene started dragging Namine towards the door. Her grip was tight. Namine couldn’t break free. “Come on!”

Namine dug her feet in. It didn’t do much, but: “No,” she insisted. “I already told you, I’m not working for you.”

Larxene raised her eyebrows, amused.

“You really think you’re in a position to make a deal?” she laughed

The sound of armored footsteps clanking on the floor filled the room.

Namine grinned.

“Yes,” she said, as Terra stopped behind her. “I am.”


End file.
